Social and Ethical Concerns – AI and Robots

Social Concerns
As the introduction of AI and robotics becomes more prominent in today’s society, making their way into a variety of occupations and performing jobs at a level above that of human capability, it comes as no surprise that robots may pose a threat to society in more ways than one. AI is becoming increasingly popular and allowing implementation in the near future may result in significant increases in unemployment in certain sectors, i.e., Bus drivers or DMV operators after self-driving cars are introduced. Forming social concern number one, robots overtaking humans in the workforce. There have been countless arguments as to if machinery can actually perform at a superior level to that of a human, a lot of arguments where the robot has come out on top for reasons including increased precision, wider knowledge base, stamina etc. However, despite AI contributing to employment challenges in society, the development of simple technology continues to negatively impact human social life. For example, cellular phone technology: millions of people in the US have become dependent on this technology, so much so that basic communication skills are lost when faced with real life interactions. To better express the previous statement, a study by Tamyra Pierce was undertaken to examine how the use of technology had impacted (280) high school students on a social level. The results showed a correlation between the level of social anxiety of face-to-face interaction, specifically recording an increased level of anxiety following an increased amount of online interaction the student had participated in. Furthermore, students reported that they were now far more nervous meeting someone in person than they were meeting someone online. People are also more socially awkward when posed with real life situations as the expression of body language, tone, touch and facial expression is not possible through machinery.

Ethical Concerns
As soon as a machine is used to perform human tasks, a number of ethical concerns can arise. For example, in terms of advising or diagnosing, a machine can quite simply, only make decisions based on the information that has been programmed into its system, making machines solely fact / knowledge based, not accounting for the areas of emotion, intuition or reason; all factors of which may limit the decision-making capabilities of the machine. Not to mention, referring again to the example of a doctor, if a machine or expert system was designed to mimic the capabilities of a doctor but fails at the assigned task resulting in the death of the patient, who is liable? Who become parties in a lawsuit? The programmers? The owner of the equipment? The patient? Modern bureaucracy often distributes responsibility in such a broad manner that it may be possible no single individual or party can be identified as culpable a result of a system’s catastrophe.

https://sites.psu.edu/siowfa15/2015/09/16/are-cell-phones-ruining-our-social-skills/

https://nickbostrom.com/ethics/artificial-intelligence.pdf

10 thoughts on “Social and Ethical Concerns – AI and Robots

  1. I believe your post has made some very valid points. I agree that individuals must remain extremely cautious when implementing AI into today’s world. While there are many negative impacts, AI also has the potential to positively impact the world that we live in today. I do however, disagree that AI will not takeover human interaction. I believe artificial intelligence has the ability to expand individuals knowledge in all aspects, which could help to increase and cause human interaction to become more beneficial.

    Aside from social concerns, ethical factors play a big role within the world of artificial intelligence as well. According to a blog post from CEO Magazine, titled “This could be humanity’s greatest threat – and it’s not climate change”, artificial intelligence continues to present new and complex ethical challenges. Within this article, it makes it clear that upcoming AI is allowing businesses worldwide greater access to customers and markets. There are much deeper precautionary measures that should be taken with AI involving ethics. I believe the example stated regarding medicine is by far one of the most important involving machinery and ethics. Taking precautionary measures will allow for greater safety and increase the accuracy of results if performed correctly.

    Source: https://www.theceomagazine.com/business/innovation-technology/power-ai/

  2. Your post makes some very good points, that I believe are very valid in today’s technological age. According to a CNBC article, robots could take over 20 million manufacturing jobs in the world by the year 2030. The article also claims that 14 million of these jobs could be in China alone. While robots working in human job roles may to be a positive thing in every industry, I believe that in the manufacturing industry this will be a very positive thing. The manufacturing industry has proven to have a very negative reputation because of unsafe labor conditions and low wages. Many large companies have been criticized for their use of sweat shops to produce their products and goods. If robots were to take over 20 million jobs by the year 2030, I believe that this could result in the decrease of these unsafe conditions and low wages for workers. In addition to this, if 20 million jobs were to be taken over robots by the year 2020, we could see a 5.3% increase in global GDP. Although robots taking over human jobs as a whole could be a negative thing for the economy, in the manufacturing industry it would not only be a positive for the economy, it would have the potential to eliminate poor working conditions in factories. Ultimately, I believe that new technology and advances have the potential to have a positive outcome on certain things.
    Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/26/robots-could-take-over-20-million-jobs-by-2030-study-claims.html

  3. I found your post to be very informative and I believe you raised several valid points. It is certainly a wise idea to consider the possible negative consequences of expanding AI at the rate it is currently expanding. However, I do not believe AI will overtake human interaction, nor will it eliminate jobs. As a whole, AI will certainly displace jobs, but that is no new trend in the United States. Think back to the Industrial Revolution; I’m sure many Americans were very worried about automation taking all the available jobs. Simply put, times change, but so do the people and workers in that timeframe.

    In regards to human interaction, as long as these programs grow, there will need to be an associated human programming on the back end. Thus, even with intelligence such as machine learning, there is a human element because someone ultimately decides the capability of the technology. I think automation will drastically change the way we live our lives, but it will ultimately be about making life easier for humans. Therefore, the human element will remain at the forefront of AI improvements.

    Source: http://theconversation.com/worried-about-ai-taking-over-the-world-you-may-be-making-some-rather-unscientific-assumptions-103561

  4. To a certain degree I disagree with the fact that these robots will cause job loss. Yes we might lose the basic jobs but in a sense, these robots create more jobs! The technology needed to keep up with these inventions is uncanny. There will be more innovation, more creation and more jobs! Technology is always frowned about for losing jobs but people are thinking the wrong way. Technology is always evolving.

    Not only does it create jobs, it “”Increased productivity leads to more wealth, cheaper goods, greater spending power and ultimately, more jobs.” In general it just makes life easier to live. Forbes gave a great example. They took an ATM and showed the trail of how it created efficiency, jobs and made things cheaper! So, I myself though I would trace something back. I chose the cellphone. If we did not have cellphones we would of not had a crazy amount of jobs we do now. There would be no Verizon, At&T, there would be no LTE and programming the phones, etc! But not just the high end jobs are affected, so the jobs as simple as making the phone cases, phone wallets, screen protector, etc. The list really goes on and on. Although a lot of people my fight that technology is ruing the job market, their just looking at it the wrong way.

    Sources: https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2016/12/17/automation-has-created-more-jobs-in-the-past-but-will-it-now/#429b3c9757cd
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/automation-can-actually-create-more-jobs-1481480200

  5. In regards to whether artificial intelligence taking our jobs, it may be true in some aspects but not all. I believe that there are professions that artificial intelligence should not enter. A prime example is in the world of medicine. Having a doctor perform operations on patients feels the safest to me. The main reason is that anything can happen. A machine is not going to be able to account for surprises that occur during the operation and this could be a life or death situation.

    Another example of where I feel artificial intelligence won’t be able to thrive is in driving. Waymo is a company that is promoting driver-less cars but it isn’t full proof. There are numerous accident reports that could have avoided if there was a driver present. We are able to react to complex situations that occur in driving where machines cannot.

    Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/cruise-waymo-apple-which-self-driving-cars-crash-the-most-2018-11

  6. Will AI take your job? My answer to this question is probably it depends. It depends on what you do for a living, your age, your address, and your education background. With further subdividing, jobs can be divided into many kinds. Is it a routine task? Or it requires professional skills? Or some highly sophisticated work. AI is fully automated which at the same has lower operation cost, and it can also replace people doing work with high risks. Nowadays, labor cost is getting more and more since there is an easier way to do work, which is AI. Even some so complicated work can also be done by high-level AI. Automation has already redefined and changed old industries. A lot of workers lose their job, while a new job position is not suitable for them. The transformation of industry is inevitable. Nevertheless, AI indeed does well in many other fields. One of the most famous is SIRI. It provides great convenience for mobile phone users. As to self-driving cars, which change people’s perception of cars in the past, are beneficial for disabled people and people who cannot drive. In my opinion, AI has unlimited possibilities. We cannot imagine how it is going to be in the future. However, the development of anything has a cost. Rationally developing AI is the most suitable.

  7. With artificial intelligence a bounty of potential benefits and threats to society. With AI being viewed as the future, especially from a business stand point, it is being worked on and constantly advancing. I personally dislike how AI is being used currently in ways that take away the need for lower skill workers in society as many of those workers depend upon those jobs to make a living. Yet at the same time, this technology is advanced to the point where from a business stand point, it is more cost efficient and potentially more accurate performing its designed task. It’s an interesting point to bring up the ethical dilemma that is caused by robots performing jobs like these when they cause a situation where say a lawsuit is involved. With a human conducting the job there is actual risk for that person to be punished where they could lose something of value where as a robot or AI does not understand or really have anything of value to them. I’d assume the company employing this AI would have to face the punishments in that type of situation. I agree that society has become dependent on AI technology and that it is negatively impacting our lives in terms of interactions with people in the natural world. The advancements in technology become parallel with advancements in society as we become more robotic ourselves (hence the difficulty in expressing our emotions and having issues social anxiety and awkwardness). The advancement in AI technology also poses a massive threat to society. Elon Musk, one of the smartest men alive, has extreme fears that AI could mean the end of the human race. With AI technology being able to perform at a higher level than humans, there is a possibility for an AI system to become self aware and be able to outsmart any human. This could make them unstoppable from a human stand point. The threat of people using AI as a weapon is growing as well and could be drastic. This is extreme and isn’t a concern amongst most people, but I believe it should be if Elon Musk, an extremely intelligent person that works with AI systems in a very advanced field, thinks so.

    Reference to Elon Musk AI interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra3fv8gl6NE

  8. I tend to disagree with some of the research stating that the advancing technology will overtake humans in the workplace. I think that with the expansion of so much knowledge, it is nearly impossible that jobs will diminish. Yes, maybe some jobs will no longer be needed, but with this will come even more, completely new opportunities for employment. Some of these jobs include, YouTubers, software engineers, app and web developers, data miners, and social media influencers. As an advertising major, I have seen the ways that technology has allowed my field to grow. I have a graphic design and digital media trends and analytics minor, both of which simply did not exist before the expansion of technology and the internet. I will most likely end up in a job that I did not know existed when I was a kid and people asked me, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”.
    However, there is most certainly a downfall to the advancement of technology, and I think that it lies mostly with our social interactions. We are now relying on social medias to drive our social lives, sometimes even more than typical face-to-face interactions. According to experts, social media is addictive and triggers more sadness less overall well-being. I have found this to be true in my daily interactions with social media. As an experiment, I deleted my instagram app off of my phone, and I can honestly say that I will never go back. I have noticed a significant changes in my life, such as increased in my overall happiness and ability to live in the moment.

    References:
    https://stewartcoopercoon.com/workplace-strategies/new-jobs-and-technology-12-occupations-created-by-the-internet/
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2017/06/30/a-run-down-of-social-medias-effects-on-our-mental-health/#501fc78b2e5a

  9. I agree that when introducing new technology, we must be careful and there will almost always be unanticipated impacts, but I do not agree that introduction of AI will have some of the negative impacts that you mentioned. Whenever a new technology comes people tend to worry if it will take away jobs, this was a concern during the Industrial revolution and when computers were first becoming mainstream. However, in both cases new jobs were created as a result of the new technology and many good things happened. While AI may take away some jobs it will also create new ones. Humans are good at adapting and will likely adapt to this new situation as we have for generations.

    Source: http://www.fusbp.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/AI-and-Robotics-Impact-on-Future-Pew-Survey.pdf

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